Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Sony unveils SLT-A77 flagship

Sony unveils SLT-A77 flagship, preview article.

Sadly not full-frame, but still: 12 frames per second with a 24MP sensor! I'm sure that's a record. It's achieved with a fixed, semi-translucent mirror, no wait (or noise or vibration) from the mirror flapping up and down like a bat caught in a clothing line.


What a brute.
I'm guessing this is their first serious attack on the sports- and reportage pro markets.

24 megapixels in a reduced frame sensor... I hope they have made some more progress with noise processing, for that's some small pixel sites there.

It's nice to see Sony has not given up on the high end market. Although I have to wonder if there will be any more full-frame models. Full frame is a difficult market, because it's pretty small and you have to have big, very good, and thus very expensive and heavy lenses for it, in order to justify the very high resolution such cameras can produce. And two or three lenses are not enough, and of course they are not exactly cheap to research, design, and build. Even Canon and Nikon only comes out with maybe three new lenses in this class per year, if that.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand - a semi-transparent mirror and an electronic viewfinder. Why the mirror with an EV?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Mmm, that's a good question. For the longest time they couldn't use large sensors for the viewfinder since they overheated. But I thought they had solved that.

Gil said...

I have SOOOO been looking forward to this! I hope it's all that the rumors have been saying that it will be. (Although, nothing ever is . . .)

Miserere said...

Why the mirror with an EV?

Because these cameras still use phase-detect autofocus; the semitransparent mirror is to redirect some light to the AF sensor.

Eo wrote:
Full frame is a difficult market, because it's pretty small and you have to have big, very good, and thus very expensive and heavy lenses for it, in order to justify the very high resolution such cameras can produce.

In fact, the opposite is true. Current FF sensors stress lens' resolution less than APS-C sensors do. The highest rez FF cameras right now have 25MP, with approximately 6123 pixels on the long end of the sensor, or 170 pixels/mm. The new Sony cameras, with 24MP on an APS-C sensor, have 250 pixels/mm. Thus, the APS-C cameras require higher resolution lenses.

This has always been the case, which is why designing very good lenses for medium format film cameras was relatively easy and simple, but much harder for 35mm cameras.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Hmm, yeah, I guess I mixed up sensor size and resolution. I still can't fit into my head that they actually made a 24MP APS-sized sensor, it's crazy.

I think the film/sensor *size* pulls it in the opposite direction though, medium format lenses are more expensive than 35mm lenses.

Thanks for the hint on the AF, that makes sense.